February 4, 2006 -- Pigeons in San Jose, California will soon be outfitted with miniature cameras and mobile-phone backpacks  to monitor local air quality.
The homemade cellphones  equipped with GPS tracking chips and pollution sensors  will beam data back to a smog blog to provide area residents with up-to-the-minute info on air quality.

And the cameras? They'll send the blog bird's-eye views of trouble spots.

February -- A Whitehorse man who tried to thwart tax collectors by claiming he doesn't have a name has been fined more than $3,000. Cliff Hanna was convicted in territorial court late last month of failing to file income tax returns for the past three years. He attempted to persuade the justice of the peace, Garry Burgess, that he is a free man who owes the government nothing. In a sworn affidavit, he declared that the name James Clifford Hanna was put on his birth certificate many years ago in Alberta without his permission. He disclaimed responsibility for debts or obligations the government may now assign to that name. He said people continue to be defrauded into believing their birth certificates oblige them to obey demands of the Crown. He added there is no record anywhere that he ever accepted the Hanna name. The fact he occasionally responds to the name means nothing, Hanna said. "I respond to 'Uncle' from my niece and nephews, and 'Meow' from my aunt's cats, but it is doubtful that any of these is my true name," he argued in court documents. As far as he is concerned, the name James Clifford Hanna is "hearsay." It is the property and creation of the Crown, he said. "If you wish to collect debt instruments (Canadian legal tender) ... may I suggest you send your invoice and demand for performance to the ministry responsible" in Alberta, he said. The justice of the peace imposed the minimum fine plus a surcharge for a total of $3,450.

Now in Victoria, BC. I'm from beautiful Jasper Alberta in the heart of the Can. Rockies - will always be an Albertan at heart!

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Originally Posted by E40FDNYL35

February -- A Whitehorse man who tried to thwart tax collectors by claiming he doesn't have a name has been fined more than $3,000. Cliff Hanna was convicted in territorial court late last month of failing to file income tax returns for the past three years. He attempted to persuade the justice of the peace, Garry Burgess, that he is a free man who owes the government nothing. In a sworn affidavit, he declared that the name James Clifford Hanna was put on his birth certificate many years ago in Alberta without his permission. He disclaimed responsibility for debts or obligations the government may now assign to that name. He said people continue to be defrauded into believing their birth certificates oblige them to obey demands of the Crown. He added there is no record anywhere that he ever accepted the Hanna name. The fact he occasionally responds to the name means nothing, Hanna said. "I respond to 'Uncle' from my niece and nephews, and 'Meow' from my aunt's cats, but it is doubtful that any of these is my true name," he argued in court documents. As far as he is concerned, the name James Clifford Hanna is "hearsay." It is the property and creation of the Crown, he said. "If you wish to collect debt instruments (Canadian legal tender) ... may I suggest you send your invoice and demand for performance to the ministry responsible" in Alberta, he said. The justice of the peace imposed the minimum fine plus a surcharge for a total of $3,450.

February 5, 2006 -- Taking candy from a baby is one thing  but stealing morphine from your mother's IV drip is really low. That's just what a Martha's Vineyard man is accused of doing moments after his mom died of an undisclosed illness at hospital in Cape Cod, Mass. Cops arrested electrician Robert Peatie, 37, who has a history of substance abuse, after a nurse caught him pouring the morphine into a water bottle.

February 6, 2006 -- The University of Vermont is offering a $10,000 reward for the return of its missing cat  but this is no ordinary kitty.
It's a 200-pound, 9-foot-long, 7-foot-wide aluminum mascot depicted jumping through an oversized V. It was swiped from the Sign-A-Rama shop in Burlington, where it was getting a makeover. Officials believe the theft was a student prank. Gee, ya think?

February 7, 2006 --The owner of a 22-year- old Dachshund claims the secret of his dog's long life is cigarettes. Wolfgang Treitler, of Austria, says his pooch has munched his way through 10 cigarettes a day for years, eating the tobacco and the paper, and chewing on the filter before spitting it out.

February 8, 2006 -- Rabid "Star Trek" fan Tony Alleyne has gone broke and declared Chapter 11 after spending more than $20,000 to turn his home into the a replica of the Starship Voyager. His house has molded walls, touch-panel blue lighting, a life-size model of the show's transporter room, a command console and windows reshaped to look like portholes. Alleyne had hoped his pad in Hinckley, England, would tempt other Trekkies to pay him to convert their homes, "but I was wrong and just over-stretched . . . I'm still proud of what I created, but it's been a financial disaster."

February 9, 2006 -- A retired Arkansas nurse breathed life back into her brother's chicken Boo-Boo by performing mouth-to-beak resuscitation on the bird after she found it face-down in a pond. "I breathed into its beak, and its dad-gum eyes popped open," said Marian Morris. "I said, 'I think the chicken's alive now. Keep it warm.' "

February 10, 2006 -- A pod of whales did a better job than the U.S. Coast Guard in aiding a missing diver off the coast of Puerto Rico. Marcos Calzada Colon, 40 was reported missing Tuesday afternoon and the Coast Guard sent out several boats and a helicopter to search for him in heavy rain and rough waters. That search was called off at nightfall, but Colon kept swimming all night. He decided to follow the whales for a while because he figured they'd protect him from sharks. Colon managed to reach his home island of Vieques safe and shark-bite free. "When I got to land, the first thing I said was: Thank you, God," he said.

February 11, 2006 -- There is great embarrassment in your future. A box of X-rated fortune cookies was mistakenly delivered to a fundraiser hosted by a Brooklyn politician. The 350 cookies stuffed with "the most graphically lurid" fortunes got mixed up with a batch of 1,750 cookies ordered for the Chinese New Year event, Borough President Marty Markowitz said Friday. Some guests "were stunned, to say the least." The annual event - to raise money to send poor children to summer camp - was attended by some 700 guests Tuesday evening, but only about 80 were still there when the dirty cookies were opened, Markowitz said. The borough president was on the second floor of the two-level restaurant when a guest "yelled to me from the first floor: `Marty, did you order these cookies? Did you see what's inside them? I think you better get your butt down here!'" Markowitz said.
Markowitz, who was not wearing his glasses, had the "fortunes" read to him by some of the guests. "I'm sure they were meant for a raunchy bachelor party," he said. "They were not cutesy. Triple X to say the least." He said his office had given the restaurant 10 slogans about Brooklyn to insert into the fortune cookies, and 1,400 were delivered correctly. They contained such G-rated boosterisms as: "Brooklyn - The 10th Planet," "Brooklyn - it's more than a freak'in tree," and "Brooklyn - it's like an everything bagel."

February 12, 2006 -- With so many mundane items banned from airplane luggage, this woman might have thought better than to pack a human head in her suitcase. Customs officials in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., seized the cranium from Myrlene Severe, a Haitian-born U.S. resident who obtained the skull in Haiti and planned to use it to ward off evil spirits. She was charged with smuggling a human head without documentation, a rap that could get her up to 15 years in prison.

February 13, 2006 -- Hundreds of soles washed up on the beaches of the Dutch island of Terschelling  not the edible kind but the wearable kind.
Thousands of new shoes appeared after a container ship lost part of its load in a storm, leaving residents scrambling over each other to find matching pairs

February 16, 2006 -- Cops in Fort Worth, Texas, are looking for a suspect with bad grammar after a burglar broke into Linens 'n Things, stole cash from the safe and left a smarmy, but horribly misspelled, birthday card. The card, next to a partially eaten cake, read, "Happy B-Day, From Ur Friendy Rooftop Boogler, 2-14-06."

February 17, 2006 -- Like mother, like daughter.
That's the case in Utah, where Chelsee Bushman, 22, gave birth to a 3-pound baby daughter and, just 90 minutes later, her mom, Sherri Callister, 42, gave birth to a 5-pound, 8-ounce son  assisted by the same nurses in the same room at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.

"Just finding out my mom was pregnant was a big surprise," said Bushman, of Springville.

February 18, 2006 -- You may have heard of hall monitors, but now China has deputized a battalion of Wall Monitors. The legendary, 4,000-mile-long Great Wall of China is suffering under the impact of the more than 10 million visitors it gets each year. This has forced Chinese officials to call on local villagers to keep an eye on the structure, and make sure gawkers don't do damage or try to chip pieces off.

February 19, 2006 -- A 62-year-old California great-grandmother became one of the oldest women in the world to give birth when she delivered a healthy 6-pound, 9-ounce boy. Family members said the delivery went smoothly. Janice Wulf and her third husband, Scott, 48, named the red-haired boy Adam Charles Wulf.

Friday's wind also caused the water level in Lake Ontario to have a slow see-saw effect called a "seiche." For a while, the water on the American shore is 2.9 feet higher than the water on the Canadian shore.

With the wind blowing the length of the lake, it causes the lake to rise on this end, said Gregway.

All the parking spaces at the top of Lake Street next to the McCrobie Building were taken. The site provided a vista of waves crashing over the Oswego harbor, the breakwall, and the lighthouse. Lake Ontario looked like an ocean as the wind churned the slate-colored water into massive whitecaps.

Winds were reported at gusts of 84MPH out on the cliffs near my alma mater SUNY OSWEGO.

I grew up on Staten Island (insert joke here) and I never knew the Great Lakes existed until I went to college here! It's really nice in the summer though

February 20, 2006 -- Luz Marrufo loved eating pinto beans  until last week.
That's when the 28-year-old DeKalb, Ill., nurse's assistant opened a can of pinto beans as she prepared a meal for her three sons  and found a bird's head inside. "I don't think we'll be eating beans for a long time, unless I make them," a nauseated Marrufo said.

more sue happy America

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the Postal Service can be sued by a woman who tripped over mail left on her porch.

The 7-1 decision revived a Pennsylvania woman's claim that she was entitled to damages after suffering wrist and back injuries during the 2001 fall at her home in suburban Philadelphia. The letters, packages and periodicals were put on Barbara Dolan's porch instead of in her mailbox.

"The government raises the specter of frivolous slip-and-fall claims inundating the Postal Service," he wrote. "Slip-and-fall liability, however ... is a risk shared by any business that makes home deliveries."

Gerry McKiernan, spokesman for the Postal Service, said that in the wake of the decision carriers would receive a "refresher course" on delivery protocols and that policies would be reviewed.

"I don't think anything radical will come from this in the way we do business," he said.

Justices had been asked to interpret a federal law that bars lawsuits over the "loss, miscarriage or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter." The court said the law did not cover Dolan's claim.

The Bush administration had told justices last fall that the Postal Service delivers about 660 million pieces of mail each day and would have a hard time disproving complaints about accidents.

Justice Clarence Thomas sided with the government. In a lone dissent, he said that personal injury lawsuits resulting from mail delivery should be prohibited.

Thomas said that under the law, the post office cannot be sued if a carrier negligently drops a package of glassware, and if the customer is cut by the shattered glass. It makes no sense, he said, for the court to allow that same customer to sue if he trips on the package.

"There is no basis in the text (of the law) for the line drawn," he wrote.

New Justice Samuel Alito did not participate in the ruling, because he was not on the court when the case was argued.